Biden’s border crisis leads to record amounts of fentanyl smuggled into US in 2022

"A decade ago, we didn’t even know about fentanyl, and now it’s a national crisis," the US Attorney for the Southern District of California, Randy Grossman, said in a statement. "The amount of fentanyl we are seizing at the border is staggering."

Fox News reports that 60 percent of fentanyl seizures in 2022 happened in Southern California ports of entry in Imperial and San Diego counties.

This comes as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced last week that in 2022 more than 379 million lethal doses of the drug were seized in the US, almost doubling the amount seized in 2021.

Agent Gloria I. Chavez, the Border Patrol Chief of the Rio Grande Valley Sector tweeted on December 2, "Fentanyl Bust!!! Extremely proud of our USBP agents & @NuecesCoSo (Nueces County Sheriff's Office) authorities who worked together, interdicted, & seized largest amount of liquid #fentanyl in the history of the USA from a traffic stop in Robstown, Texas."

"A total of 25 pounds (three gallons) of fentanyl valued at $1.8M was located in a compartment within the gas tank. This lethal amount is enough to kill a population of 5.665 million people which is 2 1/2 times the size of Houston, Texas!" She continued.

Fox News reports that in Arizona, 1.5 million fentanyl pills were seized by Arizona border agents in a single week.

Michael Humphries, Port Director at Arizona's Nogales Port of Entry, tweeted "CBP officers stopped 8 loads since Thursday totaling over a million and a half fentanyl pills. Concealment methods included gas tank, quarter panels, rocker panels, floors, doors, and body carriers. Pills included blue, multi-colored, and rainbow-colored. Great work by officers!"

When President Joe Biden took office he dramatically loosened restrictions along the southern border which created a humanitarian crisis that has lead to historic drug and human trafficking. There were 2,378,944 encounters in the 2022 fiscal year. In 2021 a record number of 1,659,206 illegal immigrants crossed the southern border.